I just spent the 2 most exciting days at the Venture Beat Conference which punishingly combined Mobile and Games sessions!
I must have walked at least 2 miles up and down the conference halls…
In the end it was worth it. Just seeing and hearing Internet and Mobile Entrepreneur GODS was insane!!!
Enjoy the bytes and snippets I heard in bullet points – just for therodinhooders!!
**What do do with an app**
– Editor of Venture Beat uses an app on his iPhone that coverts the phone into a MIRROR (so that he can touch up and impress ladies seconds before he meets them)
**The COO of Square**
– The COO of Square Keith Raobois is in my belief a Steve Job worshipper…He dropped his name several times in the fireside chat… But if you raise 100 million $$$ from Kleiner Perkins at 1 Billion Valutaions, then you can worship a lighthouse for all I care!!
Keith was very negative on anything to do with ‘tech first’, consumer later – thats why he hates HTML 5 coz its clunky. He thinks NATIVE is the only way to build apps.
Additional and Interesting quotes from him:
‘The Team you build is the Company you build’
A question he asks founders is ‘How will you employ your 20th employee’ (hinting that starting a Company with a few founders and followers is fine – BUT when it comes to the 20th employee – you are making a major promise (coz salaries is not what makes great people join start up’s) – so what is your promise??
The coup was when Keith shared that his physical trainer was not e-commerce enabled and Keith was not carrying money – so he gave him a square, plugged it into the trainers iPhone, downloaded the square app, made the trainer an approved e-commerce merchant in a few minutes and then paid him by credit card!! Now the trainer takes 25% money by CC and is even more sexy!
Keith dismissed lots of new companies as ‘technologies looking for problems to solve’ :-)))
**Trivia and Quotes**
Mobile payments now are the MORE preferred payment method on Facebook*
Notifications on Apps make money!
The best part of being an entrepreneur is that you can do what you want – where you want!
A moderator told an Entrepreneur – “You are Finnish – so we assume you played with a mobile phone while you drank your mothers milk”!!
WORD OF MOUTH IS THE BEST AND NO 1 WAY TO GET APP DOWNLOADS
“All platforms were not created equal” :-)))
Angry Birds Head of Marketing – We make Games that easy to LEARN – hard to MASTER
Same guy said ‘Brand Management is COMMON SENSE. If you cant explain it to your mother in-law, you are not doing it right”
“people want to share” – that insight made Open Feint happen
“be in the moment” (advise on where to place ads in mobile) :-)))))
Word of mouth is the the most non controllable and most non re-produceable EVENT EVER – YAYYYYYY!!!!!
The next big companies will be built by making Discovery happen – NOT DISTRIBUTION
If you cant measure it, DONT DO IT
Our Kids are OLDER than we think they are (observation based on the content they see on phones and web)
CEO of NGMOCO – said “there are more APPS THAN APPETITE”!!
Making old games come alive again – ‘Game Archeology’ – Tim Chang – Norwest
The best thing about Start Up’s is that Failure is Assumed… So its so liberating!!!
**Peter Relan – GOD INCUBATOR (founder VC of Open Feint, Crowdstar)**
There are 3 platforms – Facebook, Mobile and Asia!
Open Feint was 3 years old and ZERO REVENUE – yet we sold it a few weeks ago for for 107/110 million USD because of its AUDIENCE!!!!!
**Rich Miner – The Founder of Android!**
Test you games and Apps on Android and then SELL on iOS!
“As a Google VC now, I wear Google ‘goggles'” …. Google allows me to see everything happening in the the world of entrepreneurs (Rich is now heading Google Ventures)
Why do Companies raise money? – ONLY to invest in people!
**Nolan Bushnell – Founder of Atari**
The Game Pong liberated women in the early 70’s – it was the only format in which a housewife could BEAT a MAN – playing a computer ping pong game
“we are entering the Golden Age of Creativity”
BEST STORY EVER TOLD – A group of students in Cornell/Stanford (cant remember which one) were divided into 2 groups.
Group 1 was told to make POTS using material provided to them and they were to make the POTS BEAUTIFUL – they would be ranked on the beauty of the POTS ONLY.
Group 2 were given the same material and were told that they would be ranked on the QUANTITY of the pots made by them
Now, guess who made the BEST POTS??
Group 2 – (the quantity guys) coz they had the CONCEPT OF ART removed from their heads; so intuitively and ingeniously (to save material) they made beautiful pots!!!
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PS – If you enjoyed this – as a reward for my hard work and making you read 2 days of Gold in a few minutes – SHARE AND TWEET AND FORWARD THIS – We all need inspiration!!!